Can anyone suggest a viable indoor or outdoor culture method for producing sufficient quantity of seaweed (Gracilaria spp) seed material for raft culture using small fragments or minimal quantity of vegetative parts?
What is "sufficient"? how small are the fragments available to you? This might not be a very satisfying answer, but your success will depend in part on the species you are trying to propagate. Some species (e.g. G. coronopifolia) do not recover well from fragmentation, and are poor culture candidates. G. salicornia, on the other hand, can propagate from very small fragments with minimal effort (although I do not recommend this in open water, as it is prone to invasiveness). You might check out (if you haven't already):
Ganesan & Eswaran (2011). Raft culture of Gracilaria edulis in open sea along the south-eastern coast of India. Aquaculture, 321(1-2), 145-151.
Ken Hamel , thank you for your response. We are targeting G. edulis. Regarding the quantity, we are having few fragments weighing about 5-10 grams. To start a raft culture, we are in need of around 400-500 gram vegetative part. So I would like to know about viable culture practices to increase the quantity prior to raft culture.
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